In politics, the most efficient way to blood your opponent is to ask a loaded question.

Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
and his hand-picked backbenchers dominated a rowdy question time on Tuesday by asking the question no government can truthfully answer: how safe is our nation from malevolent foreigners?

Take one fact: there are reports the Chinese have stolen the building plans to our great big new spy headquarters.

Fact two: a Labor MP criticised cost-cutting two years ago at ASIO as disgraceful.

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“Given that more than 10,000 people have been released into the community without appropriate ASIO security checks already, what guarantee can the PM give that the community is as safe today as it was under the former government?" Abbott asked.

It is a tactical hangover from the Howard days to conflate the issues of national security and asylum seekers.

This time the Coalition’s usual immigration inquisitor,
Scott Morrisson
, took a back-seat role. He left it to Abbott and his backbenchers to ask why an accused murderer-turned-asylum-seeker roams our streets, why an accused Egyptian terrorist was enjoying the comforts of an Adelaide Hills detention centre and so on.

For a moment, it looked like Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
was going to deliver a racism version of her famed misogyny speech. She chastised Abbott for the “cheapest playing of politics". “For the leader of the opposition to be trying to raise in the community fear and alarm about these matters is truly disgraceful," she said. Gillard then engaged in a hefty dose of national security chest-beating: that our own spies were considering the horrific slaying of the British soldier in London, Australia’s terrorism alert level is “medium" and, shockingly, intelligence agencies had arrested an accused jihadist in Sydney overnight. But a suppression order was in place in the case and Manager of Opposition Business in the House
Christopher Pyne
quickly asked Speaker
Anna Burke
to investigate whether Gillard had breached it. She probably didn’t and her comments were covered by parliamentary privilege. Even so, trying to make political mileage out of such cases is always dangerous.

Independent MP
Rob Oakeshott
appeared to deliver the circuit-breaker with an odd question: Would the PM and the opposition leader put on record their acceptance of man-made climate change?

Gillard was delighted to oblige. Labor scented blood and persuaded the Speaker to allow Abbott to comment on the matter during question time.

Whoops. After briefly acknowledging that “something was happening to our planet," Abbott returned to his favourite topics of a great big new carbon tax, taxes clobbering the economy and foreign carbon traders sucking up all of our taxpayer dollars.

Coalition MPs cheered, thumped desks and called “more, more, more", forcing the ejection from parliament of six Coalition MPs and one government minister.

A loaded question can inflict maximum damage in politics, as long as it is done with intelligence.